Banning nuclear weapons: this time lip service will not be enough

A
new grassroots
network launches this week with the
twin aims of scrapping Trident and persuading the UK to join other governments
in multilateral negotiations to achieve a global treaty banning nuclear
weapons. If we get our strategies right, the peace movement can win this one,
says Rebecca Johnson.

Governments
and international humanitarian organisations like the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Red Cross will meet
in Oslo next week with doctors, emergency responders and food security experts
to hold “a fact-based discussion of the
humanitarian and developmental consequences associated with a nuclear weapon
detonation.” So far over 120 governments
have registered to take part. But the
UK - a nuclear weapons producer and deployer - has not.

These
are the humanitarian consequences arising from their own nuclear weapons and
policies that Britain and the other nuclear-armed states don’t want to
discuss. This time, however, their
refusal to join in will not silence the debates, as the other diplomats and
experts will carry on the discussions without them. Civil
society has a vital role to play in informing the debates and mobilising public
attention to pressure governments to take urgent action to prevent humanitarian catastrophes from occurring.

Britain
is at the sharp end, with a price tag of a hundred billion pounds attached to
building and deploying a further generation of Trident nuclear weapons some
time in the near future. The Coalition
government’s austerity cuts have forced the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to
postpone the final construction decision (so-called ‘Main Gate’) and contracts
for building new submarines until 2016, after the next election. The costs are so irresponsibly unaffordable and the
justifications for replacing Trident so unconvincingly weak that
further delays are likely until Trident replacement disappears under the weight
of its own contradictions. If we get our strategies right, the peace movement
can win this one.

Nationally
and internationally, the strongest arguments and the majority political,
financial, security and humanitarian interests are all moving in the direction
of abolishing nuclear weapons. There
are still powerful interest groups who would profit from further nuclear
production and proliferation, but the ground is shifting beneath them. If we mobilise effectively and pull the
stops out for the next 2-3 years, we could achieve the linked objectives of
preventing Trident replacement and getting international negotiations to ban
nuclear weapons. Both steps would
represent game-changing progress towards the “world without nuclear weapons” that
everyone –including the British government – claim to want. This time, lip service will not be enough.

Starting
this week with launch events in Reading, the nearest large town to Aldermaston
and Burghfield, Action AWE has a two year plan to use outreach, education and
nonviolent actions, including the arts, theatre and music, to engage many levels
of civil society – youth, anti-cuts, women, peace, anti-poverty and
environmental groups, pensioners,
unions and everyone in between – to
help get rid of Trident. If we can do
this together, it will free us up to devote more resources to building security
in ways that make sense – investing in people not weapons and protecting our
environment rather than the arms industries’ profits. One Action AWE aim is to make it much harder for MPs who support
Trident replacement to get elected in 2015. A similar demand was incorporated into the political strategy of Faslane
365, which in 2006-7 ran a yearlong peaceful blockade of the Faslane nuclear
submarine base, turning a rather passive opinion-poll majority against Trident in Scotland into more
active opposition. In May 2007, the
Labour Party was voted out of government in Scotland, in large part because of
Tony Blair’s rush to replace Trident.

The
next election for the British Parliament is two years away. The Oslo Conference is only one week
away. Today, ICAN UK, a network of British NGOs affiliated with the International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), will be presenting MPs
with a series of case studies that look at limited but representative
scenarios, such as the humanitarian impact of a bomb dropped on Manchester, if
Trident were used against Moscow, or a radiological accident at Aldermaston or
Burghfield.

ICAN
UK members pulled these studies together to contribute to the debates in Oslo.
Soon after Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide sent his invitation to UK
Foreign Minister William Hague, we followed up with a joint letter urging Hague
to send a delegation to the Oslo conference, suggesting that it would be useful
for the government to conduct (or make available) UK studies into the
humanitarian consequences of some of the accidental or intentional nuclear
detonation scenarios of most relevance for the UK, and to analyse the capacity
of the emergency services to cope and assist survivors if the worst should
happen. Though the Coalition government has declined to respond, ICAN UK will
present these studies to MPs today in a meeting
chaired by Sir
Nick Harvey MP.

If Trident missiles were fired

Two
of the studies consider the impact if even one submarine-load of Trident
missiles were fired. Assuming the
current complement of 40 warheads with an explosive yield of 100 kT (5-8 times
bigger than the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945), the case
study from John Ainslie of Scottish CND details the effects if
Trident were aimed at Moscow, as the Cold War objective of “flattening Moscow”
is still regarded in conservative political circles as a criterion for Trident
replacement. Ainslie calculates that
if fired at targets in and around Moscow, these warheads would cause
5.4 million direct deaths during the first few months, principally from
blast, fire and acute radiation poisoning. Residential tower blocks would be
shattered, and extensive fires and firestorms would incinerate schools,
hospitals and homes across a wide area. Radioactive fallout would affect populations at greater distances,
depending on weather and wind conditions. Moscow would be effectively destroyed, its communications, transport and
infrastructure crippled, and its hospitals wrecked or incapacitated.

A
second analysis from Dr Philip Webber, of Scientists for Global Responsibility, considers the
wider climatic impacts and humanitarian problems if the nuclear weapons on one
UK submarine were launched. Webber
considers UK targeting criteria and calculates that Trident could cause the
direct deaths of 10 million people if it were launched at Russia’s five largest
cities, Moscow, St Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Samara. Of course, many more would suffer from blast
and burn injuries and radiation poisoning, compounded by the fact that
hospitals and emergency services would be destroyed or overwhelmed.

Citing
recent environmental studies looking at a limited regional nuclear war scenario
in which a hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs were used (estimated at approximately
15 kT, with an aggregate explosive power of 1.5 MT – i.e. 1.5 million tonnes,
less than half the explosive power on one UK deployment of Trident). Webber
concludes that if the firepower from one Trident-armed submarine were used on
urban areas in accordance with current doctrines and policies, the consequences
would include abrupt and long-lasting climate disruption that would adversely
affect agriculture, natural ecosystems and millions of people around the
world. In other words, nuclear winter
is not just a nightmare of the Cold War’s preoccupation with all out nuclear
war; if Trident were unleashed, that would also cause catastrophic climate
consequences and starvation for millions of the world’s poorest people,
especially in places like Africa and Asia, where there are already unacceptable
levels of food insecurity.

Other studies consider the impact if a 100 kT bomb were detonated on Manchester.
One, from Article 36, showed that the blast and
thermal effects would cause around 81,000 immediate deaths, leaving 212,000
injured, and destroying vital infrastructure, hospitals, housing and commercial
buildings. They conclude: “The
capacity of emergency and health services to provide a meaningful response
would be minimal and the long-term impact on the psychological, social and
economic fabric of UK society would be massive.” This assessment is shared by the former Chair of the UK Standing Advisory
Committee on the Care and Selection of Blood Donors and advisor on blood
transfusion to the UK Armed Forces. In a report for Medact, Dr Frank Boulton noted
that even with the limited case study of a single 100 kT nuclear detonation on
Manchester, medical and blood transfusion services would be quickly
overwhelmed, with the added complexity of radiation-induced problems for
survivors and responders, ranging from acute sickness to immune suppression and
impaired healing. Radioactive fallout
would add to the harm and panic, hampering efforts to help the injured and
homeless survivors. Even outside the
zones of direct damage, systems of communication and transport would be left
inoperable, while people fleeing the disaster would overwhelm services in the
rest of the country. As a consequence,
many “short-term survivors” would succumb, unable to receive the help that could
save their lives.

Other
weapons of mass suffering – biological, toxin and chemical weapons
– have been prohibited, as have several types of conventional
weapons categorised as inhumane. In view of the appalling
humanitarian and environmental effects of nuclear detonations, it is
extraordinary that nuclear weapons of mass destruction have not yet been
explicitly outlawed. This anomaly
persists because of institutional contradictions and Cold War attitudes. These
treat the participation of states that have armed themselves with nuclear
weapons as essential before a process to ban such weapons can be taken forward.

Nuclear
weapons are a humanitarian and security threat to everyone, wherever we live.
After decades of failed arms control and non-proliferation approaches that keep
power in the hands of the countries that possess these weapons of mass
suffering, we have to change tack.
Learning from history, nuclear weapons need to be banned before the
processes of elimination can be effective. And, realistically, this will only
be achieved through concerted action by civil society, in partnership with
nuclear-free governments.

Rebecca Johnson will be analysing the next steps to be taken after the Oslo Conference takes place next week

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